


Blueprint

by neko_kirin3104



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, One Shot, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neko_kirin3104/pseuds/neko_kirin3104
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whenever Sho wakes up, he remembers a man. And then he breaks apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blueprint

 

_Sho-chan..._

  
  
  
**SS-0012—**

He is floating.

But then he’s not.

He feels a burst of warmth through his body, painful and numbing at the same time.

The sound of his heartbeat reaches his ears.

_Hub-dub_ . _Hub-dub_. _Hub-dub_.

Blood starts pounding in his head.

He feels warm.

He feels safe.

He moves his fingers against the confining lightness, twitches his shoulders up and down just because it feels right.

This feels right.

He feels alive.

His body starts to move more freely, stretching out his limbs, shaking his head a little.

His eyes flutter open, straining against a stinging rush of fluid.

He becomes aware of the water surrounding him for the first time.

_Where am I? Where am I?_

His eyes, his faltering senses, zoom in on something that’s attached to his face, making it possible for him to breathe.

But he suddenly can’t breathe...

He suddenly can’t feel.

He sees a hint of movement through the veil of water, but his mind can’t make sense of it.

He can’t make sense of anything anymore.

The rush of blood in his head becomes louder.

His heart starts to beat faster, his body jolting from each forceful thump.

The warmth feels overwhelming. He is bursting from the inside.

He is floating.

And then he’s not.

 

_You know I never really like to talk too much, right?_

  
  
  
**SS-0025—**

He opens his eyes and all he sees is white, harsh and suffocating in its barrenness.

He tries to move his head and finds that he can’t. Not one part of his body can.

His breath hitches. He sees his chest heave and know he’s alive.

He’s alive.

But he knows too, that he’s dying.

He knows how it feels to die. He’s been there before.

How is it then that he’s here, losing touch of life a second time, still as helpless as the last?

_Why...? Why...?_

A flutter of movement rushes past. He doesn’t see, doesn’t hear, but he can strangely _feel._

He knows someone else is in this room with him, beside him, watching him.

A question forms in his mind, but his lips are too numb to move, to speak.

To breathe...

Images begin to fill his head, memories from a life that was once his.

A life that ended before it could even begin.

Tears blur his eyes as a man’s face appears in his vision.

The man smiles and reaches out a hand to him, and he remembers more than he needs to know.

His mind reels, and he’s suddenly feeling everything—

How his lungs deflate, his breath coming out in short gasps.

How his heart thrashes and swells, tightening his chest.

How his tears finally fall, dragging hot trails down the side of his face.

How his whole body’s finally moving, writhing with his last spurt of life.

A name runs through his head once before he falls away into the darkness...

_Satoshi-kun..._

 

_But there are some things that just need to be said..._

  
  
  
**SS-0033—**

It isn’t that he finds it weird that he’s been talking to a robot for the past few days.

It’s that this robot has been making an effort to even listen.

“I feel like you’re spoiling me too much, GUMI,” he chuckles, referring to his companion, his _only_ friend, by the serials branded in green on its platinum chest.

The humanoid robot chirps, waves its steel hands before him like an average shy man as a dash of green light somersaults in peaks and valleys in its goggle-shaped eye.

“You’re cute,” he says with a smile, making the robot’s circuits buzz again in embarrassment as it imitates the way he would often cover his face with his hands.

He picks up the pen GUMI has found for him among its collection of rubbles in the basement the other day. GUMI, he figures out, must be some type of scavenger robot. It seems to love to collect things, _strange_ things, most of which he has not seen before, nor even thought existed.

There are enough familiar things there too that more than just satisfy his needs. Gray parkas and fake jeans to wear, an umbrella to whack playfully at GUMI whenever it gets boring around here. A camera with a dead battery and even _deader_ memory card that’s only good for throwing at GUMI whenever he gets pissed.

And the robot, in its perpetual kindness, takes it all, tolerates him for everything.

“I wish you can talk, though,” he mumbles as he drags the tip of his pen on the blank page of a drawing pad he has also found from GUMI’s treasure trove. “Then again... Then again...”

The rest of his words dissolve in his concentration, his brows furrowing with his serious intention to create the best, most accurate representation of his friend.

It’s the least he can do for everything GUMI has done for him.

He tries to add perspectives this time, drawing one limb shorter than the other to show depth. In his mind he can vividly see GUMI standing before him, slightly turned to one side with one elbow bent, hand balled in a fist, and head held high in the coolest, bravest hero pose this side of robot-town.

What does come out, however, is more like a caricature of the perfection he has envisioned in his head. The head’s too big, the body un-proportioned, his perspectives and depth doing more damage than good.

GUMI takes the pad and looks at it, its eyes literally drawing a blank.

“I guess it’s better that you can’t talk then,” he sighs before grabbing the pad back. He prints his name in careful strokes at the lower right corner of his masterpiece. This, at least, he knows how to do right.

_Sho._

That’s his name. Sadly, it’s all he remembers of it.

“I’ll get better, just you wait,” he says, his voice both determined and challenging, his words coming together as though in a rebellious rap from another lifetime.

Memories often come to him in snippets, painstakingly taking its time.

But sometimes they come in droves, crowding his mind until his eyes roll back into his head and he loses sense of everything around him.

The smallest of things often trigger these memory bursts.

Always, they concern that man in his memories.

One moment he’s absentmindedly whining about how art seems to come so easy for _Satoshi-kun_ , the next he’s staring blankly at nothing, equally feeling nothing, as visions of the man he once loved, has always loved, come crashing into his heart.

And then he starts to remember _everything_.

And then he fades away.

 

_It’s totally clichéd, but you more than just complete me, Sho-chan..._

  
  
  
**SS-0047—**

Sho suspects GUMI is doing something to his mind.

He always suspects GUMI for the strangest of reasons.

It happens when GUMI is all he sees all day—

GUMI sitting across from him at the low table he spends most of his day at.

GUMI serving him human food that’s more decent than his lousy attempts at cooking.

GUMI creeping him out by staying beside his bed to watch him sleep at night.

The robot might as well be sticking its head to Sho’s ass the way it follows him around.

And what about those things that GUMI always injects him with right before he wakes up...?

He’s always been too muddled with sleep to remember, but he once caught the robot at it after a rather fitful night, and has since been unable to take his full eight hours of rest.

This particular morning he’s awake enough to pull away and grab the robot’s wrist before the green pen-like stick in its hand can touch his head.

GUMI’s circuits buzz in its astonishment, but it doesn’t try to pull away. Gears clunk softly as it bows its head in a look of remorse that almost melts Sho’s heart.

He lets go of the robot, but stays at a safe distance away from it on the other side of his bed, glaring and grunting in his annoyance. “I don’t want it. I don’t care what it does, but I’m sure I don’t need it.”

GUMI raises its head and looks at him, its circuits buzzing softly in protest, its eyes flashing faintly in an unspoken appeal.

“No,” Sho says again, staying firm in his convictions, like he always does.

Like he always seems to do.

He will soon find out what those green sticks are for.

He would spend hours and hours among GUMI’S collections of junk sometimes, digging each neat pile into messy abominations until he finds something that looks interesting enough to keep him amused throughout the day.

Or familiar enough to put him in a trance while a particular memory triggers the rest of his mind to remember...

Today, he finds a small, brightly colored slab of plastic that resembles something he knows he has seen before, but takes him a few minutes of pensively fiddling with it and its three hook attachments until he finally figures out what it is.

“It’s a fish! GUMI, it’s a fish!”

He turns it around several times more in his palms, his heart pounding with excitement as an uninvited memory creeps up to his mind—

“Well, it’s a fake fish. We use this to catch the real ones. Satoshi-kun has hundreds of these things at home. HUNDREDS! Too many that I don’t even know what to do with them—”

He stops as he slowly catches up with everything he has just said, processing it until all he sees in his mind is _that_ name.

That name and the mesmerizingly beautiful face that always comes with it.

It doesn’t take a second more for him to drop to his knees, his head and his heart throbbing painfully as a burst of memories remind him of everything that he once had.

_Everything_ that he has lost.

GUMI is beside him in an instant, cradling his struggling body in its arms to keep him steady.

He hears a click and feels a slight sting at the back of his head.

But it is too late to block the memories now. Not that it’s ever really been possible.

_‘Satoshi-kun’_ has always been enough to bring him back to himself.

Like the man himself has always done so, in a life Sho now wishes to forget...

 

_You’ve broken me apart and made me whole again._

  
  
  
**SS-0059—**

The first time he sees the clones, he knows he will never recover from it.

He’s a smart man, among other things.

All he needs is a dollop of common sense, and a streak of his sneaky, stubborn resolve to figure out the access codes to every room in this house.

Every room, except one.

“What do you hide in there, seriously?!” he demands of GUMI when the curiosity finally drives him to his limits.

GUMI’s circuits whine loudly as the long suffering robot hangs his head in a look of frustration that almost makes Sho back away.

He doesn’t, of course. Sometimes he’s just _that_ merciless.

And GUMI is always _that_ > easy to guilt into giving in.

A long sigh escapes the robot’s gears as it opens a small panel in its chest, right where its heart would’ve been if it were human.

It whines again before reluctantly pressing the tiny red button above its non-existent heart.

The door that would never budge from Sho’s cunning tricks easily slides open.

And nothing could’ve prepared the man from the horror he sees when he finally steps in.

Half a dozen large, egg-shaped pods line each wall, containing naked versions of himself floating like unborn babies in a vat of clear liquid.

GUMI can’t pull him out soon enough to keep him from falling apart.

“What are those?!” he screams in dread and confusion, his body stumbling into a corner outside the forbidden room.

He barely hears the mocking hum of the door closing as he loses himself quickly to a mean bout of tears and worthlessness.

It is one of those times he wishes the robot can talk to him, explain things to him in words he can understand.

Not that any word will ever be enough for him to understand _this_.

“What am I? What am I?” he whispers over and over into his knees as he hugs his legs closer to himself, like they are the only friends he needs right now, drawing as much warmth and assurance from them as he can.

They give him nothing, of course, except to make him feel more alone in his misery.

He hears the distinct whirring of GUMI’s joints and raises his head a little to see the treacherous pile of metal kneeling before him, holding out a piece of paper for him to take.

He sniffs loudly and takes it, still unable to look the friend who has betrayed him eye to eye. Telling GUMI with a violent flick of his wrist just how miserable and angry and unforgiving he is right now.

But then he looks at the paper and can’t help but smile through his pain.

The atrocious artwork on it looks like something he would’ve done in another lifetime, when he still trusted his robot friend enough to draw its likeness—or something close to it, at least.

GUMI reaches out to point at the character written out in careful strokes at the bottom of the paper.

_Sho._

Well, at least he knows how to write his name right.

That’s his name, all he remembers of it.

GUMI is trying to tell him that he’s Sho.

He _is_ Sho.

But apparently just one of many...

He doesn’t even remember creating this abominable artwork.

“Tell me,” he says, choking on the painful tightening in his chest, his eyes fluttering from the sting of more tears. “How many times have I already died...?”

GUMI slacks its shoulders in a buzzing look of sympathy, of sadness.

”How many more times do I have to live...?”

GUMI looks up at him, leans forward a little to catch his gaze as small, green streaks of unspoken reassurances run through its eye.

He doesn’t pull away when the robot reaches for his hand to squeeze it in its cold yet strangely comforting palms.

“Tell me... Tell me...” he begs as the memories begin to flood his senses, this time with a touch of hope in them that keeps his senses from unraveling.

GUMI’s eyes show a hint of panic, but Sho grips the robot’s hand tightly to keep it from backing away.

He glares right into his friend’s eye and hisses, “...is Satoshi-kun here, too?”

 

_To me, you will always be... one of a kind._

  
  
  
**SS-0065—**

This feels a lot like déjà vu.

Except that in the past, there has always been only one robot looking over his face whenever he wakes up.

Now there are two.

The second platinum-crested robot does not differ all that much from its companion, except that it’s shorter and has yellow streaks dashing across its eye instead of green.

The marking on its chest says NEEN-0617 in bold yellow lines that almost hurt Sho’s eyes at first glance.

And it can actually talk in ways he can understand through a sound chip in its head that makes the absence of a mouth on its face seem more defined, even a bit pitiful.

_"It took us some time to learn your language patterns and create a program around it so we can talk to you,”_ it says in a voice smooth and synthetic. _"You’ve been quite a handful to care for, you know. Always deteriorating too fast, too soon before we can finish up studying you. We always have to keep a few extras to make sure we don’t lose you for good.”_

Sho’s mouth drops open in shock. A numbing chill rushes through his body, driving his heartbeat to a choking speed. “What are you saying? What is this place? Where the hell am I?!”

And then NEEN is telling him everything he needs to know, and everything else he doesn’t want to remember—

_"Your planet was slated for destruction by M-JO robots a little more than a century ago because it had become one of the major sources of pollution in the galaxy. That world was crying out for help, and it’s an M-JO’s job to make things better for it by getting rid of its destructive elements and thus give it a better chance at a healthier existence.”_

_"M-JOs are a mean bunch! They always come without warning. They’re big and destructive and completely insentient—stoic, if you may. NEENs and GUMIs are typically of the friendlier sorts. NEENs, like me, are in-charge of the intellectual part of this universal project. We study worlds and make decisions over their fates. It’s cruel, but then again, anything done for the sake of keeping the universe in general alive and kicking can’t be all that bad, yes?”_

_"GUMIs are the clean-up crews. They come right after M-JOs leave to put things back in order. They get rid of the debris, organic and inorganic alike, and help kick-start a planet’s new life, through the same tedious process of evolution—you know how it works.”_

Sho can only pretend he does, just like how he’s trying to pretend any of these is making sense to him.

_"This particular GUMI’s got some screws drilled the wrong way, you see. But I’ve decided to keep him because he’s amusing.”_

He can hear GUMI whirring in protest and it actually makes him smile at how these two apparently alien robots can bicker just like humans.

Just like what he and the man in his memories used to do...

_"He collects mementos from the planets we destroy. Anything and everything he can find that interests the gears out of him, he shoves into his bag of junks and brings home with him.”_

This put the gears in Sho’s own mind reeling, forming the question he’s sure he has meant to ask all this time

NEEN answers him before he can even open his lips. _"He brought you here, in this...”_ The robot holds out a curious little object that glints briefly in the light and cuts through Sho’s already bleeding heart.

He reaches out and takes the ring, his hand shaking from the rush of memories, his eyes blurring with the overwhelming weight of loss contained in that one tiny piece of white-gold jewelry.

The set of characters engraved inside the band rips through his soul, burn him to the bones with regret—

OS ∞ SS ~Nov. 22, 2103~

He clutches the ring close to his chest, folding both of hands protectively around it. He closes his eyes and begins to sob as vivid images from the happiest and saddest day of his life flitted through his mind, a dream and a nightmare all at once.

He’s re-living everything all over again.

Satoshi’s unexpected proposal...

Satoshi’s romantic, cheesy lines...

Satoshi’s nervous chuckle as he fumbles through his pockets before finally pulling out the ring...

The ring Sho now holds close to his heart.

The ring that’s now giving Sho more grief than happiness because his last memory of it has been mired in blood and destruction...

_Just breathe._

In deafening explosions and whispered assurances...

_Just breathe, Sho-chan._

In bloody hands intertwining tightly in love and in death, as their world and the world at large falls apart around them—

_We’re together... We’re together... That’s all that matters, right?_

It’s all too much to take.

Sho feels like he’s already died a thousand times inside and it’s still not enough.

Nothing will ever be enough...

He feels cold steel touching his arm and flinches out of his heart-wrenching reveries to fall right back into a crueler reality.

He opens his eyes and sees NEEN gazing into his face.

_"If you’re done with all the drama, there’s something we’d like you to see...”_

He looks at the robot and wonders if it’s really not as insentient and stoic as those destructive M-JOs.

But he eventually relents when NEEN lightly but insistently tugs at his wrist and GUMI just nods at him and buzzes softly, as though telling him it’s all right.

_It’s all right, Sho-chan..._

He is suddenly led out of the room, down the hall and into another room that instantly takes his breath away.

His hand clumps to his mouth in astonishment at the sight of the egg-shaped pods lining either side of the room. He slowly approaches the nearest one, his legs shaking with every step, as NEEN starts to talk again.

_"We found two strains of DNA in the ring...”_

But Sho is hardly listening anymore as he takes in the sight of the naked man inside the pod, floating in a vat of clear liquid, curled up in a ball like an unborn child inside its mother’s womb.

He stands in awe, his senses in chaos, as he stares at the achingly familiar form of the man he thought he would never see again...

_"We can’t wake both of you up at the same time because we don’t really know what this one is like and we’ve already got more problems than we can handle just by having you.”_

Sho’s heart is pounding wildly in his chest, in his ears. The heat of the blood rushing in his veins rises to his skin, making him flush, making him tremble.

_"Now that we can communicate, I trust you’ll help us help him get used to this place...”_

He smiles as he reaches out a hand to trace the alpha-numeric label inscribed on the top panel of the pod: OS-0001.

_"I’m guessing this one is the infamous_ ‘Satoshi-kun’ _, yes?”_

GUMI whirrs his approval before Sho can even gather his wits about him and speak.

He’s too ecstatic to even try making sense of everything else around him now, to even bother replying to questions that don’t even need to be asked.

Right at this moment, in this blissful space, nothing else matters.

There’s just him and the man inside the pod, and it’s all he needs right now.

It’s all he will _ever_ need...

He leans forward and presses his forehead to the cold glass, right where his lover’s shoulder is, and breathes out his name over and over, “Satoshi-kun...”

As though hearing him from inside, Satoshi begins to stir...

 

_I guess, what I’m trying to say is..._

  
  
**SS-0000—**

November 22, 2103 will go down in history as the best day _ever_.

At least, as far as Sho Sakurai is concerned.

His partner of three years has really outdone himself this time—

The best home-cooked meal...

The best dessert...

The best damn sex that has surpassed even the fantasies Sho hasn’t even started on yet.

If he dies tonight, he knows he’ll regret nothing.

And Satoshi just has to make things more perfect by taking his hand in the afterglow and saying just about every word he has always hoped to hear—

“Sho-chan... You know I never really like to talk too much, right?”

“Satoshi-kun, what are you doing?” he snorts, though his heart has began dancing in anticipation.

“Just listen to me for a moment, all right,” Satoshi chuckles softly, before taking a deep breath and moving past his own anxieties. “I don’t like to talk too much, but there are some things that just need to be said...”

Sho bites his bottom lip at another teasing retort, already feeling the heat creeping up to his face.

“It’s totally clichéd, and I’m not going to say this again, but you more than just complete me, Sho-chan...”

Sho can feel another erection growing at the sight of his lover squirming at his own uncharacteristic cheesiness, but decides not to joke about it. The romantic tension in the air has become too good to dispel at this point.

“You’ve broken me apart and made me whole again. A better me, the best of me...”

Sho grips his lover’s hand tightly, quietly urging the man to go on, because he can no longer deny how wonderful this makes him feel, all across the board.

“To me, you will always be... one of a kind.”

Satoshi Ohno never really fails to bring out all of Sho’s feminine tendencies. The fluttering heart, the flushing cheeks, the light-headedness that comes from having his heart lifted all the way up into the clouds.

“I guess, what I’m trying to say is... Even if we can’t get married for real, I—”

Satoshi’s eyes widen briefly with realization before he bends over his side of the bed to grab his pants from the floor. The scatterbrained man spends the next full minute fumbling through his pockets, making Sho roar in laughter, loud and grating, until he just stops and almost chokes on the first sheen of tears when the ring finally appears before his eyes.

It is simple and unadorned, yet undoubtedly precious and _perfect_ , just like the man who has just bared his soul to him.

“Sho-chan, will you be mine forever...?”

The first tear falls and for the first time in his life, Sho Sakurai is at a loss for words.

“Because you need to say yes tonight so the engraving doesn’t—”

Not trusting himself to speak, Sho does the next best thing. He grabs his partners face with both hands and sucks at the adorable man’s lips with all the passion in his heart.

He then grabs the ring and slips it on himself while his partner reels from the aftershocks of his soul-jarring kiss.

_I’m yours till eternity,_ is what he wants to say.

But he doesn’t get to say it in this lifetime.

Though for every life that comes afterward, he keeps this promise in his heart.

#

**Author's Note:**

> written for murasakinoyume's [Yamaficcon 2013](http://murasakinoyume.livejournal.com/20459.html)


End file.
